[Mageia-dev] "Job offer" : mentoring program coordinator

[Samuel Verschelde]

Le lundi 13 juin 2011 00:52:18, andre999 a écrit :
> Samuel Verschelde a écrit :
> > Hello to everyone,
> > 
> > I'm sure there's someone among you who wants to help Mageia but hasn't
> > found yet the good way to do it. Today is your lucky day, because
> > there's a job that's available and can be really useful and interesting:
> > coordinating the packagers mentoring program.
> > 
> > You know that one key point of success for Mageia is in the ability to
> > welcome new packagers. The better we will be at it, the better the
> > distro will be. The packagers mentoring program has been created for
> > that reason and several packagers have been or are being mentored. But
> > we have some difficulty knowing who is being mentored by who and who
> > hasn't found a mentor. And we need also to find more mentors and more
> > apprentices.
> > 
> > During a packagers weekly meeting, misc invited us to read the following
> > article about mentoring programs in open-source projects:
> > http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2011/05/31/effective-mentoring-programs/
> 
> Very interesting, especially many of the comments.
> 
> > I invite those who haven't read it yet, to read it. I'll quote one of the
> > mentoring best practices that were given: "In bigger projects, keeping
> > track of who is a mentor, and who is mentoring who, and inviting new
> > mentors, and ensuring that no-one falls through the cracks when a mentor
> > gets too busy, is a job of itself."
> > 
> > I'm looking for someone who could fill that "job".
> > 
> > Description of the job:
> > 
> > - keep track of:
> > -- who's being mentored by who, how well it's going
> > -- who needs a mentor and hasn't found one yet (this is one of the most
> > important parts: no volunteer must be forgotten, volunteers are too
> > precious !)
> > -- who can mentor more apprentices (and sometimes convince packagers to
> > become mentors or accept one more apprentice)
> > 
> > - be available for questions from apprentices or mentors, by mail, and if
> > possible, to be present on the IRC channel #mageia-mentoring on freenode
> > 
> > - help mentors with gathering "junior tasks" (bugzilla is a never empty
> > reserve that can be used for that. Maybe ask the bug triage team to help
> > identify such tasks. Maybe a "junior task" keyword in bugzilla would do
> > the trick)
> > -- small bugs to fix
> > -- new small packages to import in the distribution
> > -- backports
> > 
> > - promote mentoring (empower users into contributers. Working with the
> > marketing team would be great I think):
> > -- make the mentoring program known (MLs, forums, web, etc.)
> > -- look for new apprentices
> > -- look for new mentors
> > 
> > Some useful skills:
> > - be autonomous (ie no need to check that you're doing the work)
> > - good written english (communication is very important in this job)
> > - knowledge about packaging is a plus but not mandatory (the key aspects
> > can be taught to you)
> > - being or having been a mentor, or having been mentored would be a plus,
> > but not mandatory
> > 
> > More information about the job:
> > - does not require a big amount of work, but real committment to the task
> > and regularity
> > - remember that you have a coordination role, not an authoritative role.
> > The difference in that is that you're not here to give orders but to
> > facilitate the mentoring program.
> > - you don't have to be alone to do this job if it's too much for one
> > person: you can find other helpful people wanting to help you if needed
> > and rely on the other teams (but finding them *is* part of your job ;)
> > ).
> > -  this "job offer" concerns everything that revolves around the
> > mentoring of new packagers, but if it's successful maybe other teams can
> > follow the same approach (i18n, QA, etc... ).
> > -  depending on your level of confidence, experience and will, you could
> > be helped in your work. Maybe someone from the council can supervise and
> > help you at least at the beginning; or, if no one steps up, I can help
> > you bootstrap and organize your new "job".
> > 
> > So, who's in?
> > 
> > Samuel Verschelde
> 
> That is an excellent idea, a mentoring program coordinator.
> I've had some thoughts along those lines for some time.
> I'd be glad to contribute, especially via email and editing the wiki, where
> I could almost always respond the same day.
> But my time zone availability (generally after 22h utc) puts me at a
> disadvantage for irc communications and meetings.
> (But as part of a coordinating team, that should work well.)
> 
> Maintaining the mentor/apprentice database, as Kharec suggested, is to me a
> key part of the role. Information such as mentors available, and their
> strengths/focus, usual time zones available, communication modes
> preferred, languages spoken, and current apprentices, Would-be apprentices
> should have similar information listed.
> Not much different from the information currently in variously wiki pages,
> but maintained by the coordinator in one location.
> 
> <aside>
> One thing that occurred to me is that there is no imperative that mentoring
> process happens only in English.  If an apprentice is more comfortable in
> another language, and they find a mentor speaking that language, why not ?
>  Sure, it is useful to have basic English knowledge, but it is evident
> that many (if not most) contributors speak English as a second language.
> </aside>
> 
> Experience packaging, either as a mentor or apprentice is highly
> recommended in my view, at least for the key person.  (My experience is as
> a apprentice with Shikamaru -- an excellent mentor, btw -- and my time
> zone availability is probably why I haven't officially completed the
> process.) Also some programming experience could be useful.  (I imagine
> that most candidates would have that.)
> 
> But also mentoring can apply to other things than packaging.  So maybe we
> should give a broader scope to the mentoring coordinator job ?
> Including bugteam, QA, as well as packaging.
> That would make it more useful, as well as more interesting.
> (I would be very interested in contributing to something like that.)
> 
> So what does everyone think ?

Thanks for the input, but there's one point that's still unclear to me : do 
you candidate for the job ? :p

(the timezone question can be a problem, but not necessarily a blocking one)

Samuel